Another Faust

by Daniel Nayeri

  “Ever notice that she doesn’t treat me the same . . . as before?”

  As far as Bicé could remember, Vileroy had always treated Valentin the same way — with a mildly encouraging, inappropriately flirtatious disdain.

  Valentin toyed with the idea of telling her all about the Vileroy he used to know. The Vileroy that had come to his home in France. The beautiful woman who had met him secretly and had promised to take the place of his own disloyal mother. He could tell Bicé all these things and then just turn back the clock. But he was too tired now. He wanted to have a conversation that someone would remember. He wanted to say something that wouldn’t be lost inside some fold in time. Something inside him wanted Bicé to hold whatever he said next with her, at least for a few days.

  “She doesn’t love me anymore.”

  Bicé just patted Valentin’s hand. “I doubt that’s true,” she said, lying without skill but with enough conviction to make Valentin smile.

  A few days earlier, Madame Vileroy had given a gift to Valentin — a new room, just as she had given to the others. At first Valentin thought she would make a deal for it, as she always did. But she hadn’t. This room was a gift — a simple gift with no strings attached. Valentin thought this was strange, but he didn’t like to think about Madame Vileroy’s motivations. It was too difficult. She told him that the room would let him take his powers to the next level but that he would have to be careful. It could also wind up disassembling his organs from the inside out. Or it could leave him stranded in the ocean. She had told him all this with an unusual level of dramatic flair, her eyes glowing as she put her arm around his shoulder and whispered about the seriousness of this gift.

  Using the room would feel surreal sometimes — even unreal, like a dream. But regardless of all this, he must press on because the room was a gift for the most talented of the children. And he must never ever question what it could do for him. Until now, Valentin had been scared to use it.

  The room had blank white walls like snow-drowned fields. Valentin walked into it, the intensely nothing room — so true and untrue. The only thing in it was a window directly in the center of the back wall — a perfect white wooden-framed window, segmented into four with the same white boards crossing at its center. The window, quartered like that, the only source of light in a vast expanse of nothingness, reminded him of Vileroy’s branded eye. But different. More soothing. It looked like the window to the perfect pastoral home, and if you squinted hard enough, through the fog would appear a patch of sunflowers and a picket fence behind them. The house would have been a wonderful place to grow up, a wonderful place to explore.

  Valentin stood staring out the window — no place to rest an elbow — at the wholesome trees, the tire-swing dangling from a branch, a rolling hill. You could almost hear the rocks singing. Valentin knew a lie when he saw one. This wasn’t that. At least he didn’t think so, even though his head hurt when he stood in the room. It wasn’t a lie, he said to himself. But it certainly wasn’t the street outside their house in New York.

  Valentin put his finger on the window. The fog began to stir and seep through the glass. Behind the fog, Valentin could see walls made of mud bricks. He could see the scene outside changing. As he looked around, the room he was in had become wooded; the floor beneath his feet had turned to grass. Now he was on the outside of the window, looking into a hut, someplace very different. A moment ago he had stood inside a white room in New York. A moment from now, he could be standing in front of any window in the world, because this was the window to the world, every window that had ever been, now or in years past. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists. When he opened them again, the room was white again, exactly as it had been. He was back on the inside of the window of their New York apartment, looking out onto the illusory sunflowers and picket fence.

  Valentin turned and walked out, fully believing with his whole heart and soul that this room could help him bend time and space in ways that his old gift never could. The minute his feet left the room, Valentin felt as if he’d been hit in the face with a load of bricks. It was as if he had been asleep and was now jolted awake or as if he had walked out of a fog. Somehow, things felt different outside of that room. He shook off the strange feeling and kept going. The test had worked. Going into the test, Valentin had been a little afraid — even though Madame Vileroy had told him exactly how the room worked. She had told him what to do, what to bring, what to expect. But it never hurt to be suspicious. Now, to do anything for real, he knew he’d need believable clothes.

  Valentin almost ran through the center space, where Victoria was reading. He rushed into his bedroom, reached under his bed, and took out a pair of male ballet tights he’d stolen from the Marlowe dance room. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. He squeezed into the tights, then grabbed a white dress shirt from the closet. He pulled off the buttons, wrapped it around his body over the tights, and tied a beige pashmina scarf he had taken out of Belle’s room around his waist. He took a quick look in the mirror. He looked ridiculous. He’d just have to pretend he was a vagabond or the village idiot. On the way back to the room with the window, he was so distracted with the constant shifting of the scarf that he didn’t notice Victoria lurking in the hallway.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. “And what are you wearing?”

  “I don’t have time to talk, Vic. I have things to do.”

  Victoria turned and followed him, picking up her pace when he started to walk faster.

  Valentin kept looking behind. He could feel her cheating as he tried to get away.

  “You’re going back,” she said. Then she was silent for a few seconds more. Valentin tried to shut off his thoughts, but she was too quick. “The room she gave you — that’s what it does, doesn’t it? How do you know it’ll work? When are you coming back? Does she know that you’re doing this?”

  He reached the door with Victoria on his tail.

  “Take me with you!” she cried. “I want to go too, Valentin. Take me too.”

  “What?” Valentin whipped around.

  “I know what you’re doing, Valentin. That ridiculous costume is supposed to be from the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, right? First of all, there are about ten things wrong with it. Second of all, you can’t fool me. There’s only one person I can imagine you’d want to visit during that time.”

  “Actually, there are about a million.”

  “You think you can meet Shakespeare. And I bet you were stupid enough to pick a time when he’s already famous.”

  “I had to. I’m dying to know if it’s true — if he actually got credit for Marlowe’s work.”

  “Why’s that matter?”

  “It matters to me, OK? Just go away.”

  “No, I want to go too.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re not the only ones who’ve had a governess, you know. Lots of people have — famous people.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know lots of things you don’t.”

  “Name five.”

  “The Grand Unification Theory, tax law, binary, the capital of Azerbaijan, and how tractors work.”

  “All right, fine, who else had a governess like ours?”

  “The queen had one.”

  “Really?”

  Victoria nodded excitedly.

  “Even if she did, how would you meet her? She’s the queen.”

  “I don’t want to meet her, stupid. I want to meet the governess.”

  “Why would she tell you anything?”

  “Because I’ll have something on her. I know her future.”

  “Wouldn’t she know her own future?”

  “No one can travel to the future, Valentin.”

  Valentin laughed. “Too bad,” he said, “because now I know something you don’t.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re not coming with me.”

  Victoria continued to talk, but Valentin ignored her. He closed his eyes
again. Her voice suddenly cut out. When he opened his eyes, he was alone in front of the door. Victoria was still in the center room, reading. He’d gone back to just before he had run out there and caught her attention. For a second, Valentin allowed himself to reflect on the fact that when he used his original gift of lying to go back, it felt very different than when he used the room — and it wasn’t just a matter of scale. It was a different experience altogether. Valentin suppressed that thought, turned around, and walked into the room. Valentin never considered the possibility that the room might be a trick, a way for Vileroy to corrupt his mind — a dream or a hallucination. A foggy feeling came back over him the second he stepped inside, and a little part of him fell back asleep again.

  He went to the window and felt the watch in his shirt pocket. The white room became the forest again. The other side of the window became the inside of a hut. Valentin reached out and gracefully unlatched the window. The room filled with fresh air and smells from a different era. Roast boar. Dried anise and orange peel. A wet leather cloak drying from the rain. Valentin put his foot on the sill and lifted himself through. When he was inside, he turned around and looked through the window. He could see outside. It was a perfectly natural wood — a squirrel danced from a branch; a leaf glided gently down.

  Valentin walked through the house. A black pot hung above the fireplace, filled with some kind of stew. A wooden chair sat next to a small desk, on which Valentin saw some unfinished letters. At the top of one, he read, “June 15, 1599.” He reached into his pocket and lifted out his rusted watch. “Time to commune with some genius.” Valentin walked out of the house, down the brick path along the tulips, toward the inn at Stratford-upon-Avon.

  For a moment, Valentin felt a strange awareness of Victoria. Back in New York, she was sitting in the center room, wondering what Valentin had been up to all day. He knew this. He could see it, the way a person in a dream can see others outside an immediate scene. He questioned this strange omniscience — he had never experienced it before. But he ignored it, assuming it was a part of the room’s power. This gift was too wonderful. And it had to be real. Valentin knew it, because Valentin knew about lies, and Madame Vileroy had told him that a good liar never falls for a lie.

  Victoria had picked a book from the bookshelf lined with leather-bound volumes — some that could be found in all the world’s libraries and some that could not. She was reading The History of the World: A Work in Progress, a fairly thick book that Valentin had seen Madame Vileroy reading from time to time. Valentin found the book too exhaustive in some places, but worth looking into for colorful anecdotes. Maybe Victoria was using them for her debates.

  The passage she was reading went like this:

  That day proved uneventful for Mr. Shakespeare. A bit of light reading in the morning over sausage and candied ham was followed by his daily walk through the glen. In the early afternoon, William paid a visit at the inn to James Stafford, whose daughter, Melissa, was recently sequestered in her room for allowing John Harding to hold her hand. The father Stafford’s long feud with John’s father was the cause of the forced separation of the young lovers. Upon the suggestion of a young acquaintance, William hurried home to begin his next play, The Innkeeper’s Pretty Daughter and the Boy Who Fell in Love with Her (Despite a Questionable Personality).

  Immediately after leaning over William’s shoulder and whispering, “What a good story that would make,” Valentin realized that he might have somehow changed the course of history. Just after he spoke, a little part of him, the part that was watching Victoria in the room’s dream, caught a glimpse of what she had read and knew that he was responsible for it. He just wanted to start a conversation. He’d been sitting at the bar, eavesdropping on the portly old man’s rant about Harding encroaching on his daughter. Valentin just wanted to introduce himself. But as soon as he did, Will excused himself and rushed off.

  At that exact moment, Valentin felt a sudden pang near his rib cage, like his heart had stopped and diverted the rhythm of the cosmos in an instant. He immediately closed his eyes. The inn began to rewind. William was back at the bar, alternately spitting beer back into his mug and unrolling his eyes at the old man. Valentin opened his eyes, and the man began to shout again, something about “that rake Harding.” Valentin didn’t say anything this time.

  In New York, Victoria didn’t notice that between the time she blinked and the time she opened her eyes, the text in her book had completely changed. All of history had been altered and then altered again, and Shakespeare never ended up writing that long-winded play. Across time and space, Valentin could see all this happening somehow, but he didn’t ask himself why.

  Valentin stayed at the inn — without ever introducing himself — until he was sure Will had made it home. He decided he’d just pay him a visit and pretend he was a landowner from the Orkneys. It was midafternoon when he went strolling back up the path, along the tulips. He picked one of them to give to that dainty housekeeper he had seen up the way. He picked up a stone and skipped it along the pond. And when he got to the door, just as he knocked for the third time, he heard, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” and was almost struck down by the force that hit his chest.

  He closed his eyes immediately and walked backward down the path. Was it the flower? The pond? The third knock? Whatever it was, it had altered something. A thread from the fabric of the world had been ripped out. Any little thing could have set into motion a series of events that would eventually change the future of the past. Valentin would have to go back and try again. He would have to keep trying it till he could avoid whatever it was that had sent ripples into the timescape.

  Victoria looked up from her book, and the bookcase caught her eye. It looked as if one of the volumes was getting thinner, as though a biography was getting shorter. Another book was becoming less worn, less important to literature perhaps. Then it happened in the corner of her eye. A whole book seemed to disappear. She shook her head. Too much reading was going to her head. She went back to her book.

  Valentine cursed and kicked the head off of every tulip in the garden.

  Behind Victoria’s bent head, four more books faded and disappeared.

  Valentin had been doing and undoing the same stupid walk up to the house more than a dozen times. He had tried every way he could think of, skipping up the path, sneaking around back, shouting from a hundred yards away. “Screw this,” he said. “He’s not that good.” He closed his eyes and clenched his fist. He opened his eyes, his fist. The watch was in pieces in his sweaty palm. Valentin sighed. He closed his eyes until everything was back. Will was still at the inn. Valentin had just come through the window. He went over to the pot of stew, snorted up every glob of mucus in his nasal cavity, and spit it right in. He paused, waited to see if that might have given the greatest writer of all time some kind of flu or something. Nothing happened. Valentin smiled. “Bon appétit, jerkface.”

  Victoria hadn’t been reading for more than a few minutes when she looked up to see Valentin storming through the hall looking like a cash-strapped geek from a preschool Renaissance Fair.

  “How was it? Did you find out if he’s a fraud?” Victoria said. Valentin stopped for a moment. He thought he had returned to the moment before he had told Victoria where he was going. He must have picked the wrong moment when he was coming back.

  “You saw what happened!” he said.

  “I did?”

  “With the history book . . . the plays that didn’t get written . . .”

  “What are you talking about? What plays?”

  Valentin looked down to see that Victoria was reading an ordinary textbook. Victoria gave him a confused stare. Valentin looked around, rubbed his eyes, and kept walking. He stomped into his bedroom and slammed the door. Behind him, a voice said from the shadows, “The best-laid scams . . . huh, Valentin?”

  Valentin snapped around. “What do you want?” he said.

  Madame Vileroy stepped out. She was so pretty in the h
alf-light, like a centerfold. Valentin looked away. He was too tired to entertain his usual thoughts. He placed the watch on his nightstand. “Aren’t you curious?” she asked, slinking across the room.

  “About what?”

  “About what went wrong.”

  “Time went wrong,” said Valentin.

  “There’s time for everything you want, Valentin.”

  Madame Vileroy stared hard at Valentin. He had believed what the room had shown him. The room of lies — of hallucinations.

  Madame Vileroy hid a smile behind her pretty hand. In fact, she knew, Valentin had not gone anywhere at all. He had spoken to Victoria. He had put on a makeshift costume. Then he had entered the room. He had breathed the fog, fallen asleep, and dreamed a beautiful scene. His mind had created all of it: the tulips, William, even Victoria with Vileroy’s book. He had woken to find Victoria sitting there, only ten minutes after what seemed like a long adventure. Valentin was convinced of what she had given him to dream. And this room, it would continue to deceive him, with all the fantastical experiences he could imagine, and slowly change him to the core, leaving him nothing but a shell of himself: a dummy. He had believed the lie with his very soul — because he wanted to.

  And so Madame Vileroy confirmed something about human nature that she already knew. Even the best liars will believe anything — if they want to badly enough. “Hmph,” she said under her breath, and then she licked her lips. Yes, the observation was interesting. But more than that, there was a satisfaction to it. Because this is why she had chosen Valentin, for his weaknesses — the weaknesses she specialized in, the weaknesses that allowed her to manipulate him — and so she could watch him slowly change, become entangled in a web of false beliefs. There was a satisfaction to it, watching him degenerate. The way his eyes darted or his hands smashed the pocket watch. Like the way Belle tortured herself in the bath, or how Christian suffered from a wavering heart, or the way Victoria justified everything in her mind. Or the challenge of Bicé.